10 Hidden Safari Features You Should Try
Safari has long been the default browser on your iPhone and Mac, but there’s a good chance you’re not using it. Perhaps it’s time to rethink this. Even if you prefer other browsers like Chrome or Firefox, Apple has been improving Safari every year , and in 2024 it’s adding some cool hidden features that might just tempt you away from other options. Here’s a roundup of the best hidden Safari features you should definitely try.
Turn common links into beautiful quotes
When you share a link via iMessage or SMS, Safari allows you to create a beautiful quote with the text you’re trying to highlight. To try this out, open the article in Safari on your iPhone or Mac and select any sentence or paragraph you like. Click the Share icon in your browser and select Messages. You’ll notice that the highlighted text appears as a quote, which appears instead of the usual link preview thumbnail with the article link attached. This is great for highlighting an important quote in an article and can also entice people to click the link you share.
Use extensions to make everything better
Yes, Safari also has browser extensions . Sometimes they fall by the wayside because Apple has decided that browser extensions should be in the App Store , meaning you need to go to another app to view Safari extensions. Regardless, Safari has plenty of great extensions that will enhance your browsing experience. For example, you can enable dark mode on all sites , prevent sites from loading annoying Google AMP links , or even block ads on YouTube .
Take scrolling screenshots of entire web pages.
iOS allows you to take full-screen snapshots of web pages in Safari . This means you won’t have to manually scroll down, take screenshots, and worry about stitching them together. Open any web page, take a screenshot, tap the preview thumbnail, and select the Whole Page option to take a screenshot of the entire page. (There’s also a crop button in the top bar that lets you remove parts of the webpage you don’t want screenshotted.) You can save these screenshots as PDFs in Apple’s Files app, or save them as images in the app “Photos”.
Use profiles to your advantage
Safari allows you to create individual profiles, and you can use this feature as a distraction blocker. When you create a new profile in Safari , you can choose which extensions you want to use in that profile, use a different set of bookmarks, and even customize a specific new tab and start pages. This will allow you to create a work profile that is free of distractions since your history, cookies, and site data are also separated by profile.
Turn your favorite sites into “apps”
If you like to open multiple sites every day, Safari lets you add those sites to your Mac’s Dock . This turns them into web apps that let you browse the site without seeing bookmarks, Safari toolbars, or other distracting elements. This is a good way to browse without falling into social networks or other Internet black holes.
Make Safari’s start page beautiful
You can customize the Safari start page on your iPhone and Mac . These changes sync across all devices, so you can add your favorite photo as your Safari wallpaper and it will appear on all your Apple devices. You can also declutter your homepage to focus on the elements you actually use.
Quickly switch between Safari tabs
On your Mac, Safari has a handy keyboard shortcut that lets you switch between tabs. You can press Command-1 to go to the first open tab and replace the number to visit each subsequent open tab in the browser. The shortcut works until the ninth tab, after which you are on your own. (You can always open more tabs in a new window and use the same key combination again. Or just close a few tabs, that’s fine .)
When you use Safari on your iPhone, you can swipe the screen to switch between tabs . Swiping left or right takes you to the previous or next open tab, respectively, while swiping up on the tab bar opens a list of open tabs.
Copy links to all open Safari tabs in a few clicks.
Some of us like to live on the edge by using open tabs as bookmarks on our iPhones. This is all well and good until the browser crashes and the tabs are lost. To avoid this disaster. you can periodically save links to all your open Safari tabs . It’s as simple as pressing the tabs button in Safari and holding down the bottom bar, which tells you how many tabs are open. The “Copy Links” button will open, with which you can easily save all the tabs.
Automatically close open tabs
For those of us who don’t mind closing tabs, Safari is here to save you the hassle. You can easily ask the browser to automatically close all open tabs by going to Settings > Safari > Close Tabs on your iPhone and choosing a duration. This option is found in Safari Preferences > Tabs > Automatically close open tabs: on Mac. (Once again, it’s okay to close tabs. Just close them! )
Make websites more readable
Safari now has several features that make it easier to read content on the web. You can either ask Safari to read pages out loud , or use its superior Reading Mode to hide distractions on a web page . While these features are great, many websites don’t allow you to use Reading Mode and, as a result, also break the read-aloud feature.